2015 Digital PR Awards: Media Relations Campaign

Co-winner: JetBlue - Flying It Forward: A Chain Of Goodness With No End In Sight

Since JetBlue took to the skies 15 years ago, it has operated as a different kind of airline – the kind that puts people first. JetBlue’s mission is to inspire humanity, and while saying that is one thing, the airline wanted to deliver a program that put that mission into action.

With travelers yearning for more enjoyable airline experiences, and national news headlines often reporting more bad than good, JetBlue saw an opportunity to put a little good back into the world through “Flying It Forward” – a social movement that became a physical manifestation of the JetBlue mission to inspire humanity.

It all started with one ticket, where JetBlue awarded a roundtrip flight to an individual with a powerful story and a need to travel somewhere. This flier was selected to achieve something uplifting, such as fulfilling a dream, taking part in a humanitarian effort or making a meaningful impact on others’ lives in a new city. Once this flier traveled to their destination, they were given the chance to review inspiring stories from other people in that very city, and select the next traveler to fly it forward elsewhere.

These inspirational stories were and continue to be sourced by JetBlue crewmembers and the JetBlue social community, allowing this process to continue over and over again to initiate an ongoing chain of goodness, releasing positive action into the world. With one traveling ticket, it can take just one tweet to make what can be a world of a difference.

To date, JetBlue has enabled the ticket to travel among 17 fliers from across the JetBlue network, including New York, Seattle, Port-au-Prince, Boston, and Colombia. Stories span the themes of resilience and perseverance, the pursuit of a passion, dedication to education and community relations.

Flying It Forward is indeed contagious; in fact, campaign videos have amassed 1.5 million video views and 2,800 social and email shares.

Rainier Communications’ semiconductor client Sckipio Technologies was founded in 2012 to capitalize on the arrival of G.fast – a new technology standard that lets telco service providers provision their residential customers with fiber-like, ultra-high-speed (1 Gbps) Internet, while using only existing copper wiring.

After nearly 2 years of stealthy R&D in Israel, Sckipio retained Rainier as its PR agency of record in mid-2014. By mid-2014, there was almost no market awareness of G.fast, and those few industry insiders who knew of the standard assumed that any enabling technology was still several years away from commercial viability. It was also widely assumed that the telecommunications semiconductor cartel of Broadcom and Alcatel-Lucent would ultimately dominate the G.fast market in the wake of their hegemony over G.fast’s technological predecessor ADSL.

With Sckipio prepared to deliver working silicon in early 2015, the PR campaign had to catapult Sckipio from obscurity into the lead position as the brand most associated with G.fast, and simultaneously de-position the competitors as being late to the party. To achieve this, Rainier developed and executed a classic Art of War (Sun Tzu) strategy: “Attack the enemy where he is unprepared; appear where you are not expected.”

Rainier capitalized on long-standing relationships with the telecommunications technology media and analysts to secure pre-brief meetings for Sckipio executives prior to the Sckipio chipset and design wins launch. Rainier reached out to 125 journalists and 82 analysts, pre-briefed 17 of these key influencers, and sent embargoed releases to many. Light Reading’s Editor Ray LeMaistre (among other editors) named Sckipio the first vendor with a G.fast solution, even ahead of industry giants such as Broadcom: “Sckipio Turns up the G.fast Volume.”

The G.fast chipset launch generated 45 pieces of standalone coverage, including key analyst reports, and coverage from partners. With the help of the Rainier team, the industry recognized Sckipio as the market leader in G.fast, and industry influencers started looking to Sckipio for background and opinions on G.fast as an alternative to FTTH.